Bremen Castings uses robotics in its cleaning room to grind fins off its gray and ductile iron castings. It has also created an interesting safety program for its workers.

When it comes to plant safety, fixing a problem after an incident is less than helpful. Bremen Castings, a 70-year-old family business in Bremen, Ind., has taken a proactive course to preempt accidents in its gray and ductile iron foundry and precision machine shop operation.

According to company president, JB Brown, “Instead of seeing a potential accident and ignoring it or stepping over an obstruction, we wanted our employees to take responsibility for everyone, including themselves.” As a result, Bremen Castings has implemented near-miss accident reports.

In practice, this report is filed whenever there is a near-miss or potential accident. This could qualify as anything ranging from a water puddle to stepping over a cable that could cause tripping. The report is emailed to the safety team, and corrective action is taken to prevent similar situations in the future.

“I think the near-miss reports have had a big impact on shifting from individual responsibility to shared responsibility within the foundry and machine shop,” Mr. Brown says. And it has played out in the shop with more than 561 days and 850,000 hours of zero-accident lost time filings.

Seems like a good idea to me. For more information about Bremen Castings, visit the company website.